The gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university paused during the massacre to mail photos of himself brandishing weapons and a video in which he delivered a rambling "manifesto".
In the video, shown by NBC last night, Cho Seung-Hui railed against wealth and debauchery, portrayed himself as a defender of the weak, and voiced admiration for the 1999 Columbine High School killers.
"You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option," Cho said in the video portion of the package that NBC received yesterday and turned over to the FBI.
One of the images of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui. Photo: NBC News/PA Wire
"Thanks to you I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people," Cho said, adding: "When the time came, I did it. I had to."
NBC's broadcast drew criticism from police on and some of the victims' family members canceled interviews with the network.
NBC said it had acted responsibly in showing the images, which it said represented a small fraction of what it had received. But the network and a rival, ABC, said they would limit future use.
The images dominated US news coverage yesterday evening, two days after the killing.
While NBC acknowledged that the material from Cho was likely devastating to the victims' families and that its news division was split over whether to air the material, NBC News president Steve Capus defended the decision to do so.
"This is I think as close as we will ever come to being inside of the mind of a killer, and I thought that it needed to be released," he said on MSNBC.
NBC News president Steve Capus
"Pretty much every single news organization all around the world has made the same decision, that it was appropriate to release this information."
NBC said it contacted authorities as soon as it received the package on Wednesday.
"NBC News took careful consideration in determining how the information should be distributed," the network said.
"Our standards and policies chief reviewed all material before it was released. One of our most experienced correspondents, Pete Williams, handled the reporting."
Police handling the investigation into the shooting in Blacksburg, Virginia also expressed disappointment at the airing of the images and rants by Cho, who killed 32 people and then himself on Monday in the worst shooting rampage in modern US history.
State police chief Steve Flaherty said, "We're rather disappointed in the editorial decision to broadcast these disturbing images."
The photographs showed the student (23), who killed himself after the massacre, brandishing the two handguns he apparently used in the shootings, the deadliest in modern US history.
Other photos showed Cho, clad in a dark vest in which he carried ammunition, in threatening poses with a hammer and a knife and with a gun pointed at his own head.
"Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off," Cho said, without making clear to whom his remarks were directed.
University police said that Cho had been accused of stalking women students and was taken to a psychiatric hospital in 2005 because of worries he was suicidal. A Virginia court order issued at the time declared him "mentally ill" and said he presented "an imminent danger to self or others," ABC News reported.
In the video, Cho mixes religious references with disgust at what he calls the hedonism surrounding him.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats? Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs? Your trust fund wasn't enough? . . . Those weren't enough to fulfil your hedonistic needs? You had everything."
An 1,800-word written diatribe in the package was laced with profanity and expressed a desire to get even, the network said. It mentioned "martyrs like Eric and Dylan," an apparent reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot dead 12 students and a teacher at Columbine school in Colorado and then killed themselves.
NBC said the package received at its New York headquarters bore a time stamp that showed it was mailed between Cho's killing of two people in a dormitory and his attack two hours later on classrooms where he killed 30 more people.